Revealing the name of my stealth game and doing it on a budget again …

Ereptoria was the name of my very first game experiment. I say experiment as I was mostly messing around with the in-house CMS from my day job. It was a typical turn-based browser game in which players were the leaders of thieves’ guilds on an island-city. Ereptoria – City of thieves was the exact name.

Ereptoria - City of thieves

The game was online for a few months only then I shut it down (that was 6 years ago if not more). I didn’t renew the domain and some domains hoarder took it. Eventually I realized the name was cool and waited to get the domain back. It took 2 years if I remember right. I had no clue what I’d be doing with it. I just knew that I liked the name and wanted to keep it for myself.

Two years ago I wrote this. What’s written there is still valid though the details have changed. Back then I was still thinking of a city-island, waypoint to all trade routes, filled with thievery and murders and to this day this idea is still in my mind. The difference is that now I have a game to attach this concept to.

From space to dark fantasy

My stealth game project went from the initial idea of allowing players to play some kind of Han Solo or Malcom Reynolds. So a space game. I never could wrap my mind around the concept of stealth in space and couldn’t find a way to make this fun. I still think it can be done but it’s not in my mind right now.

Then I went to a Vietnam war concept. Some kind of reversed tower defense game still based around stealth. It wasn’t a bad idea but it was terribly boring me so I moved away from that.

Then came the first “true” concept for my stealth game. At that point I already had a solid code base doing all kind of stuff. In fact doing way too much stuff. That’s what you do when you have a vague idea in mind but can’t make a game out of it. You keep working on your damn engine. So that concept was basically “Vampires VS aliens”. Aliens came to Earth, fought humans and now vampires had to help humans just to be sure they wouldn’t run out of food.

It was a nice concept but I just couldn’t come with the right motivation to make a game with it. And the domain name is already taken so that didn’t help my motivation (finding a good domain name is really hard… the weirdest things are already taken…).

So that’s when I thought about that domain name I wanted to use for some game. I checked my notes, the concept behind Ereptoria and I found a match!

Doing it on a budget … again …

Well I’ll skip the part about why it’s done on a budget but for the first time I thought I’d have a nice amount of money to invest in a game. Stuff happens you know …

I know that you don’t need to have a huge budget to create a cool game but this time I really wanted to do myself a favor. I wanted to have all my art custom-made. I wanted to pay someone to create a trailer (because I deeply hate doing that stuff). I wanted to have cool concept art done and maybe even give away t-shirts with it on it or something. I wanted to pay myself a big gift. So it’s not about linking money to success it was just me wanting to spend money to have fun. Like some beach vacation if you want but while working on a game.

Inspiration from Dynamite Jack

Ever since I decided to do a 2D stealth game back in January I’ve been avoiding anything that might remotely be similar. I just wanted to figure it out by myself. The good news is that I think I did but (see point above) recently I was feeling a bit down I must say.

So I decided to go look at what others have done in the hope to find some motivation and I found Dynamite Jack. It’s an addictive stealth game that I think didn’t require the kind of money I was ready to throw on my current project. Well at least when it comes to graphics (yes I always link money to graphics because this is my weakest link). But the thing is that the game just works the way it is. It doesn’t need to be fancier. It’s already neat the way it is. In fact it’s really fun and well worth the $5 I paid for it.

So just by playing this game I added a little bit of motivation to my big recipe I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. I see my own game differently by getting a bit of input from Dynamite Jack. It helps me to consider it for something else than maybe just a fun project I wanted to throw money on.

Don’t get me wrong. I still wish I could spend all that money on my game just for my own satisfaction but now I feel like I can still produce something that I won’t feel bad in any way about even though if now things have changed. The timing was perfect I must say.

So more news?

Nope. Not for now. But now you know that a game named Ereptoria (+ probably subtitle) will be released probably this year. By posting this I’m just adding some motivation to my big recipe. That way I’m sure I can’t go back anymore

I’m a visual type of person and one of these days I’ll have to accept that. No matter how hard I try to plan in ways that don’t involve working on graphics before I nail the main mechanic/feel/experience I can’t help it. The good news is that I’m slowly accepting that I’m just like that […]

You are dead. Stabbed in a dark alley? Poisoned while you were eating in a tavern? Left bleeding in the street after getting robbed for a few copper coins? You don’t remember … You’re lying in the shadows wondering what could have gone wrong, surrounded by the failure of your life. You hear the breathing […]